- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Watching the breathless final moments of the Mohali Test match from his post at backward square leg, all Nathan Hauritz wanted to do was bowl.
That he didn’t, despite being Australia’s lone specialist spinner on a turning fifth day pitch in India, has exhumed the old questions about whether Hauritz is truly a Test bowler and whether he has the confidence of his captain Ricky Ponting.
From Hauritz’s even tempered viewpoint, he can understand why Ponting did not call on him after the lunch interval, saying he had not earned “the right” after an unthreatening spell in the morning.
“Personally it was disappointing I bowled those two bad overs that cost about 16-17 runs or whatever it was. In the end it probably cost me a chance to bowl after lunch,” Hauritz told AAP.
“You’ve got to win the Test match at the end of the day so I can’t do anything about that, but it would have been great to go on and bowl, and bowl well.
“I was saying to Pup (Michael Clarke) ‘I’d love to be bowling’, but my spell in the morning didn’t really give me the right to bowl in the afternoon.
“Punter needed to get wickets and he obviously didn’t think I was the right guy. That’s what it came down to and I can’t change that.”
The fact Hauritz was not at his peak on the final morning, though he claimed the wicket of the nightwatchman Zaheer Khan, is not in doubt.
Why this was so is the more intriguing element, and it was here that Hauritz offered something both frank and revealing.
Across the match he was trying to change his technique to bowl in a style more akin to that of the Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh.
On the final morning, this backfired. Badly.
“I’ve been working on a few different things, to try to attack the stumps a little bit more from a wider angle,” he said.
“Generally I’ve been a little bit tighter towards the stumps throughout my career, and we just spoke about trying to get the ball at a wider angle, sort of like what Harbhajan does, trying to get the ball to drift in, instead of drifting away.
“That stuffed me around a little bit with my body and my rhythm.
“I think once I got back into what I was doing late in the afternoon (in the first innings) the ball was coming out a lot more consistently, but I don’t think I’ll be fiddling around too much in the second Test with that sort of thing.”
Looking back, Hauritz knows the mid-match experimentation was a significant error.
“I was really happy with the way the ball came out in the first innings, there were periods when it didn’t (work), but the majority of it was really good,” he said.
“I guess that’s what was so disappointing in the second innings, and I think that came about because I was trying different things which, in hindsight, I should never have tried.
“Cricket is supposed to be a very simple game and I tried to make it more complicated.
“The most important thing is to learn from the other day.
“What I learned was to consistently work on what works well, and once you don’t work on those things you put more pressure on yourself, and in the end it created problems.”
Having learned not to second-guess his own methods, Hauritz must now deal with the other obstacles that confront him – Indian batsmen in conditions that suit their wristy style and penchant for quick scoring.
“Over here the Indians play spin so well, and when you play on these grounds, sometimes you don’t even need to bowl a bad ball and it goes for four,” he said.
“In Australia it might go for one or two, but over here everything gets heightened.
“The ball gets late cut, it’s four, the crowd goes wild, next ball might be a good ball, nicked, four, and then the pressure’s right on you.
“A couple of balls there were steady, not outstanding, and Sachin (Tendulkar) drove straight past me or through midwicket for four, and it’s tough to bowl at, no word of a lie.”
And what of that frenzied final over, when he did not have the ball in his hand?
“It was such a weird feeling being out there because we were all just willing and willing and willing to get that wicket,” said Hauritz.
“I was at backward square leg when that last appeal went up, and young Stevie (Smith) threw at the stumps.
“There was only me and someone at mid on on the legside, and I was appealing, running in because it was almost like Billy (umpire Bowden) didn’t shake his head or anything, it seriously felt like he was going to give it out.
“And then when he didn’t the next thing I saw the ball go that way and I was like ‘oh’.”
Build your own fantasy cricket team and put it to the test with Draftstars daily fantasy competitions. Pick your match, pick your team and watch the points roll in to take out cash prizes on each match. What are you really gambling with? Set a deposit limit.